For true believers, Wagner's `Tristan' worth every penny

October 15, 2001|By John von Rhein, Tribune music critic.

It was only a matter of time before the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of the world's finest instruments for Wagner's music, and Daniel Barenboim, one of our leading interpreters of Wagner, should meet at the summit of the composer's music-dramatic art, "Tristan und Isolde." That moment arrived Saturday at Symphony Center, when the music director led an uncut concert performance of "Tristan" as both the climax and conclusion of the season's "Wagner and Modernism" perspective.

Although some of the singing disappointed, the conducting and orchestral playing were of a quality most Wagnerians despair of hearing more than once in a lifetime. And they were more than enough to keep the audience-congregation raptly engaged for the nearly five-hour duration. The 2,500-seat house looked reasonably full, although some empty seats were evident. A second performance is scheduled for Tuesday evening before Barenboim and company take their "Tristan" -- and two other Wagner programs -- to Carnegie Hall this weekend.

FOR THE RECORD - Additional material published Oct. 17, 2001:CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS.In a review in Monday's Tempo of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's weekend performance of Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" at Symphony Center, it was incorrectly reported that the cost exceeded $1 million. In fact, the cost of the CSO's performances of the opera will amount to less than $1 million.

How many other orchestras could have undertaken so ambitious or costly a project within their subscription series and brought it off so superlatively? Management has refused to disclose the budget for "Tristan." Even without the planned lighting, staging and design elements (which were scrapped for a savings of about $200,000), these performances are costing the CSO well in excess of $1 million. Given the economic reverses the CSO is suffering, one cannot expect the orchestra to tackle anything this big in the foreseeable future.

For Wagnerian true believers, it was worth every penny to hear every note of a sublime score the CSO had not performed in its entirety downtown for 54 years. Barenboim had given Ravinia a preview of coming attractions in August when he led the CSO in Act 2 of "Tristan," with Waltraud Meier as Isolde, a role she reprised here on Saturday. That concert hardly prepared one for the warmth, vitality and conviction of this integral performance. Beyond Barenboim's Furtwaengler-like flexibility of phrasing and understanding of the spiritual dimension, his shaping of Wagner's huge paragraphs had an urgency that never felt forced. The music was allowed its natural ebb and flow, and a rich tapestry of detail emerged.

Everything that was admirable about Barenboim's reading was there in his masterful treatment of the Prelude, a tone poem forecasting the lovers' ill-fated bliss, with violas and cellos surging to the overwhelming climax. In magnificent form, the orchestra proved the most vital "character" in the music drama.

Nature did not equip Meier or Christian Franz, the Tristan, to match the CSO's stentorian power, but both artists sang honorably. Meier again proved that musicality and intelligence can go a long way in Isolde's music. If she lacks tonal amplitude and a firm column of sound, her long stage experience made every key moment register. She soared in an impressive arc from bitter fury to warm femininity to the radiant apotheosis of the "Liebestod."

Franz, newly installed as an ensemble member of Barenboim's Berlin State Opera, is being hailed in Germany as the new young heldentenor the world has been waiting for. That judgment seems premature. The basic sound is attractive, more reedy than baritonal in timbre, possessed of a lovely mezza voce when he chooses to use it. But the stubby, barrel-chested singer made an unromantic, uninvolved knight and he tended to push his voice beyond its natural limits -- he sounded raspy and tired by the time he reached the third-act monologue. John Tomlinson's magnificently tragic King Marke was pitched at a higher level of dramatic intensity from the rest of the singers. Nadja Michael as Brangaene sliced through the lush orchestral textures with a penetrating vibrato, harsh and steely. Andreas Schmidt made a strong Kurwenal, Brian Davis a blustery Melot. Marcel Reijans sang sweetly but proved uncertain of pitch in the Sailor's song.